Everybody who made a record before 1967 has a bad psychedelic moment. This week we unearth Muddy Waters' cloudiest judgment-- when he allowed Chess Records to refashion him into "Electric Mud," a guy who dresses in robes and piles his hair higher than Marge Simpson. If the rear sleeve photo can be believed, it takes two cans of generic hair spray to achieve Electric Mud’s follicle altitude and he wrote songs like “Herbert Harpers Free Press” with a feathered pen!
Incidentally, Chess released this album on its "Cadet Concept" subsidiary label, so it could be deleted without disturbing the Chess cataloging sequence.
Suspect Record: Electric Mud by Muddy Waters Release Date In Relation to Sgt. Pepper LP: One Summer of Love later.
Suspicious Psychedelic Instrumentation: You know you're in trouble when "I'm a Man" starts out with a harp—the kind canonized saints play! One of Muddy Waters' henchmen, if not the M-A-N himself, sounds like he's got a pants cuff caught in a wah-wah pedal and is furiously struggling to get free. And then there's the flutes. "Hippies like flutes," you can imagine Marshall Chess telling Muddy, I mean, Electric Mud.
Bad Psychedelia Enabler: If anything can be blamed for this hallucinogenic hoochie coo, it’s the British Blues Boom, ignited by Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Ten Years After and Fleetwood Mac. Their transfusion of new blood on the killing floor made this freaky side trip a logical step for Waters. So why does everything here sound like Steppenwolf at the wrong end of an echo chamber?
What's It Sound Like? After the Stones recorded several Muddy Waters copyrights and named themselves after his 1950 song "Rollin' Stone", Muddy returns the favor by covering "Let's Spend The Night Together" and adds insight to his frame of mind when he agreed to this project: "I'm going red and my toe's getting tied/I rub my nead and my mouth's getting dry- I'm so high! And I'm tired!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7JJg46e_pE
Worst Bad Trip Moment When a really agitated tom cat caterwauls us into “Tom Cat.”
Photo 1: Electric Mud- front cover Photo 2: What do you get when you cross Maharishi Mahesh Yogi with Pepe Le Pieu ?! Electric Mud! That's spelled M-U-D. Mud! Photo 3: Electric Mud- rear cover
Serene Dominic is a freelance writer.
He's performed as Serene Dominic, Vic Masters, The Human Torch, a rash of truly funny tribute band like Mutant Beatles Experiment, Dragon Attack (Queen) and Bluebird (Wings), as well as being a driving force behind Gullaballoo and Love Lounge for the past ten years in the greater or not so great Phoenix area. And now, he's the host of the greatest 15 minute vidcast ever,"THE SERENE DOMINIC SHOW" . He's been called "The World's Most Maniacally Depressed Salloon Singer," "The Pitbull of Pop" and "The Schlub of Love." But you may call him "friend." Or "fiend" if you're not a good speller. In 2003 he wrote a book on Burt Bacharach and is currently working on several different books most notably 1967—The Last Year in Pop. There's hundreds of articles he's written for Phoenix New Times, MetroTimes, Creem and other weeklies you can link to from serenedominic.com Go there and feel like a real cyber pal!
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